A while ago a senior Service Provider network designer told me that they have serious issues with IPv6 deployment as IPv6 requires a separate PPPoE session from the CPE devices which significantly increases their licensing costs. The statement really surprised me; PPP was designed to be a multi-protocol environment and it’s very easy to configure IPv4 and IPv6 over a single PPP session in Cisco IOS. I think I might have tracked down the source of this “information” to the 6deploy IPv6 and DSL presentation which states on Page 11 that “Separate PPP sessions are established between the Subscriber’s systems (or CPE) and the BBRAS for IPv6 and IPv4 traffic”.

Being too Cisco-centric, I cannot figure out whether this claim has any merit, as it clearly does not apply to Cisco IOS. Are there really boxes out there that are so stupid that they cannot run two protocols across a single PPPoE session?

Ivan Pepelnjak, CCIE#1354 Emeritus, is an independent network architect. He has been designing and implementing large-scale data communications networks as well as teaching and writing books about advanced technologies since 1990. See his full profile, contact him or follow @ioshints on Twitter.

The author

Ivan Pepelnjak (CCIE#1354 Emeritus), Independent Network Architect at ipSpace.net,
has been designing and implementing large-scale data communications networks as well as teaching and writing books about advanced internetworking technologies since 1990.